Garmin is back! New features!

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It was a tough 48-hour period, but the Garmin Connect importer is now fixed. As many of you know, Garmin’s been busy rolling out a lot of changes to their site over the past few weeks. We’ve adapted our code and everything should now be 100%. If you’re still having trouble, shoot us an email and we’ll investigate.

Naturally, we were caught in between working on some existing features and rolling out new ones, while patching the importer. So, we had to wrap things up. And voila! New features.

Our very hilly stomping ground for SmashrunHQ.

New Maps: Trails and Satellite View

We’ve added a new trail focused map that includes enhanced elevation and terrain data. If you run a lot of hills or trails this is going to be your new “go to” map.

Our middle-of-nowhere run in Andalucia.

In addition, we added the Satellite map. It was silly not to have it on Smashrun before, especially, considering how useful it is for orienting yourself before and after a run. Besides, it makes the Smashrun Pro map look even better!

You’ll get a guider the next time you click on your route, explaining how it works. Basically, when you open up a route, you can mouse over the globe icon on the top right of your route map to switch styles.

The next step will be unlockable map styles. Maybe even a treasure map, maybe even with hidden badge locations. Maybe.

Interactive Charts and Graphs for Ranks

We are currently in the process of making every single chart on Smashrun interactive. Most of the charts will look pretty much the same, but we’ll be adding additional layers of detail.

We started with the Ranks section, so now you’ll be able to gain some useful insights just by mousing over them…

Ranks Ranksaster

We’ll be working through these interactive charts bit by bit, while all the while doing our best to stay on track with the other features we’re getting ready for Spring. And who knows, it’s even possible that the mythical shoe tracker might make an appearance…of course first we’ll have to dust off our notes from early 2014.

Update (Feb. 15 – 2:36PM GMT+1): It looks like the new Garmin API no longer buckets all run activity types under “Running”. Instead, they’re all getting passed as the specific run activity type. If you get “no new runs found” when trying to sync, it’s because you have a run categorized as Treadmill/ Track/ Trail/ Street Running. You can either change the activity type to just “Running” and they should all import. Or, if you can hold off a bit longer while we prepare the patch, we’ll fix it so that you can import your runs as is!

Update (Feb. 15 – 9:38PM GMT+1): All fixed! Everyone should now be able to import their runs without any problems.

Garmin importer currently down

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There is currently a problem with the Garmin importer and we are looking into it. For any users who sync their runs via Garmin Connect, please hold off from clicking ‘sync’ until we’re able to diagnose and patch the issue. We’ll keep everyone up-to-date as we learn more.

In the meantime, you can still export your GPX/TCX file from Garmin Connect and import it to Smashrun either manually or via email.

New Tutorials

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With so many new faces around here, thanks to our December buy pro/give pro promotion, we thought it’d be helpful to create a couple of quick tutorials to get everyone acquainted with their new pro accounts.

Training Bands – learn how to highlight different training bands in different periods and understand what they mean contextually.

Pro Map (a refresher from the Smashrun Pro page) – a quick summary of the features within the pro map including fastest segments, splits, SPI, change in pace over distance, and map filters.

Progress Towards Goal – how to use Progress Towards Goal to stay on track and help manage your training schedule.

Pace Trends – an overview of how we generate Pace Trends based on SPI and how to use it.

You can access the tutorials on the top right of the Analyze section (shown below).

Tutorials Button

Small patch

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We did a release this weekend to fix a couple of issues.

  • Runkeeper GPX files should import correctly now
  • You should once again be able to resize your mobile browser viewport
  • The terrible infinite reload bug that some poor souls were plagued by should be resolved

In addition we’ve now run virtually every last string on Smashrun through translation, and they’re up all up on our translation server. If you want to help get Smashrun sorted out in your language we could sure use the help.

The change should be transparent to English language users, but since it affects every single aspect of the site there’s no 100% guarantee we didn’t break something in the process. If you see something strange please email us at hi@smashrun.com, and we’ll investigate.

New notables

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We added a few new notables with the release this morning. These are mostly just to support badges we have planned for the future, but are kind of interesting in and of themselves.

New notables for all users

Before sunrise – started and finish your run before the sun comes up

During sunrise – started your run before sunrise and finish after

After sunset – started your run after the sun has set.

During sunset – start your run before sunset and finish after

Full moon run – ran during or after sunset when the moon was full

Winter solstice – ran on the Winter solstice

Summer solstice – ran on the Summer solstice

New notables for Pro users only

Warmest run in [1m/3m/6m/1y/ever]

Coldest run in [1m/3m/6m/1y/ever]

Other Pro Notables: Fast Start, Fast Finish, Highest elevation, Greatest hill difficulty, Most elevation gained/lost, Highest/lowest speed variability, Best performance, Highest max cadence, Highest average cadence, Most negative splits.

Progress Towards Goal

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Setting a goal has always been the first step towards better training, but tracking your progress towards it provides the guidepost that will lead you through your toughest training days.

The challenge with goal setting is that even the most conservative training plan can fall through, but knowing how far you have to run to stay on track means you’re more likely to reach your goal(s). Even more importantly, knowing how much distance you can run per week to catch up by any future date makes it much easier for you to adapt. This is why we built Progress Towards Goal.

This feature helps you answer the questions:

  • “How much do I have to run every week to be on target with my 2014 goal?”
  • “How much do I have to run per day this month to be on track by November 30th?”
  • “How do I stay on target even when I take a couple of rest days?”

To view Progress Towards Goal, Smashrun Pro users can now mouse over the bar graph of a current month or year-long goal and click on ‘Show Progress’.

Show Progress

This will take you to the Goals section, which you can also access by clicking on Analyze from Overview.

Progress Towards Goals

Your list of current goals will show up on the top left with your past goals underneath it, and you can view all of your historical goals with its corresponding details.

The yellow line graph indicates your current progress, whereas the grey line graph shows the most direct path to your goal.

The x-axis shows the days you ran. The color gradient indicates how far you ran – the darker it is, the shorter the total distance you ran that day relative to other runs for that month. The brighter it is, the longer the total distance for that day. You can mouse over the individual runs to see how much distance you covered that day and clicking on it will take you to the corresponding By Run page.

Mouse-over x-axis

When you mouse over the line graphs, you’ll see how far ahead or behind you are from the most direct path to your goal, as of that date. So think of the grey line as your guidepost. You can be above or below that line at any point in time, but staying close to it means you’re more likely to reach your goal.

If you’re behind, you can mouse over any date in the future to see how much distance you have to run per week/per day to get back on track by that date.

Catch up by today Catch up by tomorrowProgress towards goal on track

Naturally, you’re not expected to run everyday. The great thing about Progress Towards Goal is that it will automatically recalculate your different paths to help you reach your goal, regardless of how many miles or how many days you run each week.

So rest when you need to, run when you can. Progress Towards Goal can always tell you what you need to know to stay on track, so you don’t have to do the math in your head.

With the holidays approaching we’re all going to need all the help we can get sticking to our goals. Hopefully this and the other Smashrun Pro features will help keep you on track.

Progress

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We just did a release tonight with a couple dozen bug fixes and a few UI improvements.

For example, you can now navigate back and forth between the Run Overview and By Run page by using the calendar. When you click a month or a year from the By Run page, it’ll take you back to the Overview for that month or year. There’s also about a dozen improvements to the run import routines, and some minor UI improvements like being able to close dialogs by pressing the escape key.

Meanwhile there’s 2 big projects underway at Smashrun HQ.

The first and foremost is the Smashrun API. This has been a huge development effort, but is finally nearing completion (likely in the next few weeks). In the long run, this is going to make it easier for you to get your data in and out of Smashrun. And, eventually, it’s going make it easier to embed, share, and make use of your running data wherever and however you want.

The second project is the translations of the site into any language that we can find people willing to help us translate. This has been a massive job but, thanks to the generous efforts of some multi-lingual runners, Smashrun is starting to look pretty international. With tonight’s release, we just pushed all of the latest translated copy, so please let us know if you notice any problems and we’ll make sure they get sorted out.

Once the decks clear, there’s so much cool stuff in the works. Shoe tracker (finally), progress towards goal, dynamic run list, and of course more badges!

Lost in translation

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The translation of Smashrun to 18 new languages is off to a great start. Thanks to the efforts of a core group of Smashrunners, we’ve translated the badge award messages into French, Dutch and Chinese. And Hungarian, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian and German are not far behind.

That said, we’ve really only just scratched the surface of the work that needs to be done. We’ve gotten a bit ahead of ourselves and added a new language selection drop down to the settings page. But, to be honest, it’s really just a way for you to help us spot bugs at this point. We’ve made an initial pass at localizing some values: timestamps and colors for example, but we’ll need a lot of help to see this project through. We’re ripping out the guts of Smashrun’s UI, mixing it up to support different languages, and then putting it back together again.

We’ve had a lot of long days and late nights this past week and changed a ton of code. And, if everything went well, then nothing should change. So, if you see something that went wrong, please let us know and we’ll sort it out as quickly as we can.

If you want to help make Smashrun available in your favorite language. Shoot us an email at hi@smashrun.com.. We still need all the help we can get.

Friends’ weekly scorecard

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Improving the friends drop-down

We’ve had several users in the past request that we add their total weekly distance on the friends drop-down. We’ve also had a few users request the ability to compare their weekly distance with the Smashrunners they follow. We added both. They might seem like minor additions, but both changes will hopefully encourage you to keep running!

Revised friends' drop-down

If you currently follow other Smashrun users, you’ll get a tooltip the next time you login telling you about the new and improved friends drop-down. If you’re running solo, here’s how it works:

  • Friends appear in the order of the most recent run.
  • The intensity of the color bar indicates how many more or fewer miles they ran than you did so far this week.

So, if your name is first on the list, then that means that you’ve run more recently than any of your friends have. And, if all of your friends have green bars next to their cards, then you’ve run more miles than any of your friends have so far this week. The total distance is calculated on a trailing 7-day period (so that includes today and 6 days back).

If any of your friends have not run at least once in the last 7 days, their stats will appear faded so you can focus more on those who ran recently.

A patch for a few Garmin users

We also included a patch for the Garmin importer. Summary stats should now match what you see on Garmin Connect. If not, please let us know so we can take a look at it!

New badge, beacon and weather

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A badge for the polyglots

For those who missed our post on Facebook and Twitter, Smashrun is currently working on translating the badges to multiple languages! It’s the first big step towards internationalizing the site and, soon after, we’ll tackle the trickier task of translating the main interface.

Translator Badge To acknowledge those who are helping us, we’ve created the Translator badge. The languages we’re currently translating include: Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese(Brazil), Serbian, and Spanish.

We can add more but, at the moment, we’re only adding the ones where we’ve got translators. If you’d like to contribute to a language, please send an email to hi@smashrun.com – we’ll have you set up and ready to go!

A new tool for diagnosing your imports

Our code base for evaluating the data integrity of different apps and devices is a beast. It looks for every possible way that your data can get messed up based on what we’ve seen in the past: time traveling imports, GPS teleportation, multiple dupes of the same trackpoint, large data gaps that just went walkabout – we mean everything. We’ve also been using those tools to diagnose problems when users report data issues. We’re giving you those exact same tools.

If something is wrong with your import, you’ll see a little beacon show up in your toolbox. Click on it and it will let you know what adjustments we’ve made to clean up the data. And, like the rest of the toolbox components, the beacon is hidden from anyone viewing your runs.

Beacon

Weather data migration

We’ve given it some thought. Err… lots of thought, and we decided we’re moving everyone to the paid weather service provider that we had previously used only for our Pro users. We discovered that there were just too many gaps in the free weather service. So, we’re moving everyone to Forecast.io which is far more comprehensive. We’ll now import weather for runs within the past 3 days, so if you ran within that timeframe we should be able to get your weather (pro users will continue to have weather for their runs backfilled for their entire run history).

More fixes! Because we love fixing stuff!

– Tweaks to the pause detection

– GPX import failures due to erroneous values within trackpoints should now import

– Fixes for the “In it” badges and the Ultramarathon badge (fixed after your next import)

– FB auto-publish for imports via email should now work

– Actually, import via email notification should also dismiss on first try (let us know if not!)